By now, you have probably seen the Mission and Values posters in your facility or have seen “Improve the Lives We Touch” in the signature of an email from a Summit colleague. But, you may not know how or why these came to be Summit’s mission and values.
Last summer, Summit’s leadership team spent several days focused solely on the team’s vision for Summit. The founders of Summit talked about why they started the company – to combine a passion for recovery with a professionalism and integrity that they saw was being lost in the industry. The leadership team also spent time with several Summit employees who work daily on the front lines with clients, family members, and Summit colleagues. They told about the Summit difference: the positive impact in the lives of those we were treating and working with, and how Summit does it in a unique, better way than others in the field. They talked about the love for the work of helping clients break free of addiction, the collaboration and support of their fellow workers. We captured the essential ingredients of that Summit difference in our stated Values, and the Mission recognizes that Summit makes a difference for every life it touches – of course the clients, but also families, employees, communities.
We knew it was time to roll this out to the whole company. Summit has been blessed to grow quickly, opening brand new facilities and growing by purchasing established programs. We are up to seventeen facilities and still growing. With that rapid growth, it is easy to lose the unifying culture that makes Summit special. We run the risk of having seventeen different cultures, without common inspiration and guidance. And so the Mission and Values are both a reminder of the standards that guided Summit’s beginning and a commitment to what will chart its course.
We hope you have noticed that there is more to the Mission and Values than posters and email taglines. There have been town-hall style meetings promoting our emphasis on company culture. Your department and facility are picking employees of the month and year, recognizing the team members that best live out the mission and values. At the end of the year, Summit will even recognize the facility that best carries out the mission, by presenting a Cultural Excellence Award. Every employee will be evaluated according to the Values. We will stay focused on these key pieces of our culture, rewarding those who live them out, and making immediate corrections when they are being neglected.
None of us can fulfill our mission alone. We all depend on each other. If we are doing that with our values in our minds and in our practices, we will together accomplish Summit’s mission to improve the lives we touch.